Ch.6 - Partners in Learning: Parents, Families, & the Community

For Chapter 6, Roslynne & I presented “Family-Centered Teaching.” The main idea for this section was that in order to provide for the needs of the students, the needs of the family unit must be met first. Students have a hard time focusing in class when there are bigger problems going on at home. In “The Ron Clark Story” for example, Mr. Clark visit’s the home of a little girl in his class. He tries to get her to work on her paper but as he can see, she has many responsibilities children her age don’t typically have. She had to watch over her little brothers and cook them dinner while her mom, a single parent was at work. Mr. Clark went the extra mile for this student, stayed over to help her watch her brothers and cooked them all dinner.

He later talked her mother into arranging that her sons stay a little longer with their sitter so that her daughter could have more time to study & focus on her school work. At the end of the movie, she was awarded for having a perfect score on the SATs. Now, we may not be able to go to that extent for every student but the point is that there are so many students out there with so much potential. Sometimes all they need is a little motivation and some time to work on it.

It is very important to collaborate with your students’ families, to know what’s going on in their lives outside of the classroom so that you can provide whatever extra assistance you or your community can help with. Know your community. Know your resources and take advantage of them because that’s what they’re there for!